Coolant [Spaceships]

[AlexanderHowl]

One of the primary issues with reactionless engines is that they allow for every shuttle to become a WMD, as a SM+6 shuttle traveling at .01c is the equivalent of 100 megaton bomb. One way to deal with this issue is to arbitrarily have a speed limit, which mechanically works but is unsatisfying. Another way to deal with it is to use a consumable to limit the duration of the thrust, either as fuel or as coolant.

I tend to favor coolant because you can use water. For example, a reactionless drive could transform one component of water into steam (which is vented) for every days of thrust × acceleration (a spaceship with 4g acceleration would vent four components of coolant every day). Since the thrust required for sustained acceleration would decrease as mass decreased, coolant would effectively function like reaction mass (for example, 10 components of coolant would allow for 14 days of thrust at 1g). When a spacecraft runs out of coolant, it suffers 10% of HP for every combat turn that it continues to maintain thrust, as the waste heat causes massive damage to the drives.

So, would you use coolant to control reactionless drives? Have you used something similar in your games? If so, what was your experience like?